I need to get some more 2hg in. Always loved that format

It's also really underplayed too. I"d love to see more of that because it's a lot of fun.

OGW is really awesome! I got a buncha fun stuff in it that's good for my Abzan commander deck. :3

Ooh what commander

Anafenza the Foremost, who else?! XD She's the best!!

Ikr I had a deck based on her too but I deconstructed it to make two other decks now I'm working on my third. If you have a skype we should play sometime =D

... A specific sixth mana source? That sounds incredibly tedious. I may feel more strongly about that than how people felt about banding.

In all the time that I've played MTG, I've always thought that (1) was just plain old colorless. Yes, you can use any type of color to pay numbered mana costs, but the lands that generated (1) or (2) and so on that can't pay for colored mana, the only word that entered my mind was "colorless".

All in all it changes almost nothing. Maybe we'll see artifacts in the future that require it but I'm pretty sure it won't have that big of an impact. I think a 6th color would utterly destroy things but slightly changing colorless won't be too bad. If anything, I can't wait to see what they do with it in the futue for other planes. Maybe we can start finally having colorless spells and creatures that aren't artifacts.

This set is kinda Meh.

The wastes are a nice touch, but really it feels like fetch, expedition, and filter lands are the thing, and the rest of the set was just thrown together to make it more plausible to consumers.

The eldrazi are going to RAPE EVERYTHING.... again. Less so than during original Zendikar, but it's still pretty unbalanced.
Of course, there's plenty of exile and creature destruction to deal with all the potentially-lethal creatures.... but it still feels rather incomplete.

Pulled a Chandra out of my fat pack. While I'm glad that we're going to Innistrad again, I really wish they would have done a third booster. Felt like bad writing, with having a Chandra and Nissa quickly working together and destroying Ulamogg and Kozilek super quickly.

I feel you, I totally do.

And what about Emrakul? No one has seen hide nor hair of Emrakul. Did it escape into Innistrad, to feast upon the undead, vampires, and other creatures?
(Though I'd feel super-stoked to see more wolfir!)



(And NO, I SWEAR IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH WANTING TO SEX THEM ALL UP.)

That's what I'm thinking. The fact that Sorin, Ugin, and Nahiri weren't their(on Zendikar)to help in the fight with other two really doesn't sit well with me. I actually plan on writing a journal about this.

Do eeeeeet. So when you are proven right, you can totally point to your journal and go "CALLED IT."

the new mana confluence taps for colorles as a choice. does that mean that cards like birds of paradise will produce colorless mana too?

They will not. For Mana Confluence/Birds of Paradise to tap for colorless, it would have to be worded like "add one mana of any type to your mana pool."

thanks

From a standard competitive viewpoint, I'm a little more concerned about g/r Eldrazi, since it just got all sorts of fun toys. A little worried about the emergence of the archetype in Modern, too. But that's because I never want to experience a T2 Wasteland Strangler, putting my Rift Bolt from exile into my graveyard and killing my early creature.

I believe Eldrazi will be a thing AFTER Khans rotates out. With Abzan being rampant, they'll still be able to either win the game or abzan charm/utter end their way out of the eldrazis without too much difficulty. Modern is looking a little more interesting though. I'd love to see some eldrazis is something other than tron.

You're in luck, then. There's already a few worthwhile Eldrazi variants starting to make a splash in modern thanks to stuff like Eye of Ugin/Eldrazi Temple/Urborg helping to make the deck's threats infinitely easier to cast. Most of what I've seen is black-based, with an optional splash into either blue, white, or red depending on what the player wants to do.

And non-ramp Eldrazi are going to trickle into Standard before rotation, granted the lack of a Standard pro tour is going to dampen their emergence some.

How 'bout dem Stormchaser Mages.. U/R Delver, anyone? :3

Bruh, it's all about Naya Prowess.

Really, the only gripe I have with the set is that the colors are (still) horribly unbalanced in terms of power. I was hoping that Oath would bring better green cards, and while there are a couple nuts ones, for the most part green still feels like the weakest of the five colors. (It becomes a lot more glaring when you put the green commons/uncommons up against black, which is far and away the strongest color in Oath)

It's near impossible to perfectly balance any format, especially limited when you receive a set of randomized cards. Besides, I'm not sure what makes you say black is better other than the removal it gets. Scion Summoner, Stalking Drone, Netcaster Spider, Saddleback Lagac, and Tajuru Pathwarden would all like a word with you. And they're all common to boot!

It's mainly the ratio of good to bad cards that make black the strongest. (Ignoring rares here).

Tajuru Pathwarden is absurd, I won't remotely argue on that. (Bane of my existance come prerelease, haha). Lagac's biggest weakness is that it can't Support itself, so if it gets killed immediately its impact was minimal at best. Spider and Summoner are fine. Stalking Drone is good. But that's...what, 4 cards out of 20+ green commons/uncommons (from Oath)? I'd have to get duplicates of a few of them to make me consider more then just a splash.

Black, meanwhile, has absurd support, and not just in the removal- it covers everything from control to midrange to aggressive strategies. The removal is quite frankly some of the best I've seen in the past few blocks; Grasp of Darkness and Tar Snare were never dead in my hand, and Oblivion Strike should've been 5 mana. A lot of the black creatures (mostly Eldrazi) punch through combat and survive til the next one since most of the creatures have toughness 3+.
Stuff like Essence Depleter and Kozilek's Shrieker can close out a game if you're in a control strategy and have any access to colorless mana (which was pretty easy even without a lot of Wastes). Slaughter Drone is one of the best commons in the whole set just for how it discourages attacks and/or can usually get a few free hits. Even stuff like Zulaport Chainmage can be a powerhouse if you've got the Allies (and if you are, the likelihood itll wheel in a draft usually goes up if there's no one else going for Allies).
There's only a couple of cards that aren't at the very least "okay" or at least a playable. The ratio of playables to non-playables/corner cases is almost completely inverted when you compare the two.

Completely understandable when you put it like that. I will admit that I believe black received a little too much good removal this set. I can't comment too much on the rest because I've only done one limited event so far with Oath, but it did consist of me playing black, and playing against many black decks (and getting punched in the face by black fliers). Thanks for the analysis! I'll keep that in mind next time I play.

Wastes will make things more complicated for new players, but it doesn't really change much. I like how it opens up design space for the future.
Chandra and Nissa are constructed goodness.
I smashed some Reality out of the sideboard. I like Reality Smasher since we have enemy pain lands (now Tri lands) in standard
Kalitas is nutty. Save a kill spell for that guy.
Sylvan advocate is awesome 100%
Reckless Bushwacker is going in many of my modern decks

LoL @ modern being broken in half. I think I'll wait for the next banhammer cycle. Will be fun to see all the speculation.

Standard is a good mix of 3-5 color rare-jamming decks and dragon decks. At least there's a variety of expensive mythics, rares, and lands.

I unfortunately haven't been following standard simply because it's too expensive now but I'll take your word for it!

Modern being broken is rather hilarious, especially because almost everyone is seeing that banhammer coming down hard. Even the game stores in my area have stopped buying the cards because they know they'll never be able to sell them. It's funny and sad at the same time.